+ AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING
+ ANNOUNCEMENTS
+ SPECIAL ELECTION TUESDAY THE 13TH
+ MEETING OF CONSERVATIVE LEADERS LAST SATURDAY THE REAL TRUTH ON THE
+ NATIONAL DEBT!
+ AGENDA FOR THIS WEEK’S MEETING
Our 12 noon luncheon for Wednesday, October 14th will be held at Italiano’s restaurant, 4801 North Lincoln in OKC. Any registered voter who lives in the incorporated city limits of Oklahoma City will be eligible to vote on December 8th to determine whether or not to continue the one cent sales tax which has been extended several times to pay for much of the remaking of downtown OKC. Of course people who don’t live in the city limits will not be able to vote. However, when they spend money in OKC, such as when we buy lunch at our meetings, they will help foot the bill for MAPS III. All folks also have the opportunity to access most of the things built with these tax dollars.
This will be a huge decision as the tax is due to last almost 8 years and will be the largest sum of money asked for from a sales tax so far by city leaders.
Therefore, we are going to have 2 meetings in a row to try and ferret out as many of the ins and outs as possible regarding what is being called MAPS III. This week we will have OKC Councilman Brian Walters come speak. He was the only person on the council who is opposed to MAPS III. Then the following week we will have OKC Councilman Larry McAtee. Mr. McAtee is an articulate spokesman on behalf of the multiyear project. We will have a lot of time for questions. As ground rules, any person believing a question was not adequately answered will have an opportunity for a follow up question before we move on to the next question. Even if you don’t live in the city, I hope you will come as you will have friends who do and I predict that after these meetings you will know more about the issue than most people going to the polls. Your knowledge will be influential to others.
+ ANNOUNCEMENTS
OKC AREA - OKC Mayor Mick Cornett will be speaking at 3 different town hall meeting this week in an effort to sell the MAPS III agenda.
All meetings will begin at 6:30 p.m.. Monday the meeting will be at John Marshall High School, 12201 North Portland. Tuesday, the location will be Douglass High School, 900 North Martin Luther King Avenue and the Thursday meeting will be held in the Cancer Center Conference Room at Integris Southwest, 4401 South Western. If you can’t make our meetings on Wednesday, attend these and don’t be afraid to ask tough questions.
OKC AREA - The Business and Professional chapter of the John Birch Society will meet on Wednesday morning for breakfast for our monthly meeting. Breakfast is served at 7:15 a.m. and we will start the meeting at 7:45. Our speaker this month will be State Representative Mike Reynolds (R-OKC). Last year Representative Reynolds received a phone call from a landlord that had leased space to ACORN prior to the election. When ACORN vacated the property owing back rent, the landlord sold some computers that ACORN had left behind.
Representative Reynolds purchased the equipment and data. Much evidence was left on the computers regarding ACORN’S election activities. Representative Reynolds is an excellent investigator and we will be looking forward to hearing about what he discovered. If you want to eat, the breakfast is $6.00, come a little early as the fellowship is always very interesting.
+ SPECIAL ELECTION - TUESDAY OCTOBER 13TH
This Tuesday will be the special election to fill the vacated seat in House District 55, formerly held by Ryan McMullen of Burns Flat. The registration is about 2 to 1 Democrat, but all of Western Oklahoma has been trending toward the Republican party. I believe there are only 2 Democrat Senators and 3 Democrat Representatives West of I-35 which is a major shift over the past few years. The Republican candidate is Todd Russ from Cordell.
Todd appeared for our interview about a month ago and showed some good conservative instincts and positions on issues. Our members voted to endorse him and we gave him $1,000 to help in his campaign. There are two primary reasons we need Todd in the legislature. First, if elected, he will bring us to within 5 lawmakers of making the state house veto proof, if by some chance we end up with another Democrat governor for the next 4 years. Second, if the Democrats win, liberals will try to make the case that the tide has turned and there is growing support for President Obama and the Democrat’s agenda. I don’t believe this seat has ever been held by a Republican. I want to urge our readers and their friends who live in the district to be sure and vote on Tuesday. Special elections are won on very low turn outs. Your vote counts huge in this race. If you live anywhere in Washita County, parts of Caddo County and parts of Canadian County, especially parts of El Reno, please take the time to vote for Todd Russ. Lets win this seat and help put another conservative in office.
+ MEETING OF CONSERVATIVE LEADERS LAST SATURDAY
This past Saturday afternoon, while many Oklahoman’s has their noses glued to the TV watching the Cowboys and Sooners conquer their foes, leaders of various conservative groups from all over the state met together to start the process of getting to know one another, find out the agenda of the various groups and then determine how we might work together on those items we can agree upon.
Each group was asked to bring 3 people from their organization with one person as a spokesman. Following are the groups I was aware of that had at least one person in attendance: Fair Tax, OCPAC, Tulsa chapter of GET OUT OF OUR HOUSE, Lincoln County 912, OKC 912, Pottawatomie County 912, Americans For Prosperity, The John Birch Society, The Tulsa Tea Party, Sooner Tea Party, OK-SAFE, Tulsa Town Hall, Liberty Business Network, Team Sara, End The FED and the Remember The Bailout group.
If you are a leader of a conservative group not mentioned here, please contact me (charliemeadows7@gmail.com) as we want to include your group also. It will take some effort to find the important issues that a majority of us can agree to work together on, but I believe the attitudes of those in attendance was that the issues are important and we need to subject personalities to the larger picture of the issues.
I believe we will come up with an agenda for Congressional candidates and lawmakers and most especially for candidates and lawmakers at the state capitol.
Therefore, I want to issue a very important challenge. Please get ready to become an activist that will have more influence over the various levels of government than ever before. You absolutely must have at your finger tips the names and contact information for your personal State Representative and State Senator. Also, the name and contact information for your personal U.S. Representative. The two U.S. Senators are the same for all Oklahoma residents. The senior Senator is Jim Inhofe and the Jr. Senator is Tom Coburn, but you must have their contact information handy. Stick those numbers onto your refrigerator with a magnet, tape them to the bottom of your TV screen or tattoo them on to your knee caps. If your representative is a Democrat, tattoo the information onto your left knee and the right knee for Republicans, I don’t care where you put the information, just make sure you have it handy at a moments notice.
To find out who represents you, log on to the Oklahoma State Election Board and find the link that will allow you to put your address in a form and it will tell you who your elected officials happen to be. Or you can look up the phone number of your COUNTY election board and they will give you that information. Once you know who represents you, many of these elected officials have web-sites that you can google or you can call the state capitol switch board and call their office for any and all contact information. The number for the capitol switch board for the House is (405) 521-2711 and the Senate is (405) 524-0126.
+ THE REAL TRUTH ON THE NATIONAL DEBT!
There is a government web-site which keeps account of the history of the national debt as well as an up to the minute account of the debt.
For that information google, The U. S. Bureau of the Debt. There are two components that make up our debt. The public part of the debt is what we as Americans or foreign governments or investors can participate in when we buy (loan the government money) U.S. government bonds, T-Bills or other government backed securities. The other part of the debt is called the private part, which is made up of money Congress has borrowed from Socialist Security, Medicare, government retirement plans and perhaps other government slush funds.
Please pay close attention for this is very serious. Most Americans are very ignorant about economics, but I am going to try and make this very simple. The fiscal or budget year for the FEDERAL government runs from October 1st of each year until September 30th of the next year.
September 30, 2007, Republicans were in congressional control of the first 5 months of the fiscal year and the Democrats were in charge during the final 7 months leading up to Sept 30. George Bush was President. The debt stood at 9 Trillion, 7 Billion and 653 million dollars ($9,007,653, 000,000.00). On September 30, 2008, with George Bush as President and the Democrats fully in control for the entire year the debt had risen to 10 Trillion, 24 Billion and 724 million dollars ($10,024,724,000,000.00). When you subtract the debt on
9-30-07 from the debt on 9-30-08, the deficit spending for the year ending on 9-30-08 is 1 Trillion, 17 Billion, and 71 million dollars ($1,017,071,000,000.00). Or in other words, we spent a little over a Trillion dollars more than the federal government took in as revenues.
Another way to look at it is this. If you divide 365 days into 1 Trillion and 17 Billion dollars, we spent about 2.75 billion dollars every day more than the government took in as revenues.
On September 30, 2009 George Bush had been President for the first 4 months of the fiscal year and Barack Obama was President in charge for the second 8 months. Also, the Democrats had now been in full control of Congress for the past 2 years and 8 months. On Sept 30, 2009 the National Debt was 11 Trillion, 909 Billion, and 829 million dollars ($11, 909,829,000,000.00). Subtracting the number on 9-30-08 from the number on 9-30-09, we find the deficit spending for the most recent fiscal year rose to 1 Trillion, 885 Billion, 104 million dollars ($1,885,104,000,000.00). Again, if we divide 1 Trillion, 885 Billion by 365 days in the year, we find that each and every day of last year we spent about 5.2 Billion dollars more than the Federal government took in as revenues.
Let me be very blunt. Not only is this unsustainable, the government will most likely NEVER be able to tax enough or grow the economy enough to get to a balanced budget, especially with interest payments on such debt. There is little chance the government will ever pay off any of the debt. Not because we couldn’t achieve a balanced budget and then pay down the debt, but because that effort will take an economic literacy far above what exists in America today. In addition, it will take an enormous amount of political will to do so. The pain and depravation necessary to correct decades of violating sound economic principles will be significant. Few are knowledgeable of those principles and few politicians are willing to take the lead in trying to educate an ignorant electorate about the pain involved as well as set a strategic course to make those necessary changes.
The most recent best time to have started with the necessary reforms was when we were faced with the crisis which brought about the “bail out for the financial institutions.” Was it a risky time for our economy? Absolutely. Had congress not voted for the bail out, would we have plunged into a deep recession or perhaps a depression? That was very possible, but not guaranteed.
What I do believe, is that it was time to do economic education and start reforms to begin our return to a sound money supply and restart our economy on sound economic principles. As it was, the “bail out”
and subsequent “economic stimulus” were nothing more than efforts for a quick fix through continued manipulation of the economy, by flooding the economy with Billions and Trillions of newly borrowed and printed paper currency.
I recently read an account in the Oklahoman which interviewed our congressional delegation about that tense time. The most interesting response came from Congresswoman Mary Fallin. On September 29th she voted against the bailout, then 4 days later she changed her vote to vote for it. She was quoted in the Oklahoman following her vote against the bailout as saying: “My heart was racing…” The stock market was in free-fall. In just minutes after the first no vote, the Dow had lost nearly 700 points. By the end of the day, it had plunged a record
777 points. She went on to say, she stood thinking that “people are losing their money, their savings and investments.”
I am sure Oklahoma bankers and business leaders were putting huge pressure on Congressmen Fallin, Sullivan and Lucas as well as Senator Inhofe to change their votes. In the end Fallin and Sullivan changed, but Lucas and Inhofe stood their ground. Based on her comments, I just simply believe Representative Fallin simply lost her nerve. She also quite possibly had little knowledge of a strategic path to take to bring about restoration for our economy.
I differ with many Republicans who might suggest the bail out and stimulus have had no positive effect on the economy. Truth is, the banking industry has stabilized to some degree, and the stock market has improved. However, job losses are still increasing, though at a slower rate. The problem is, we didn’t fix a badly manipulated economy, we are just in the process of re-starting the cycle and the next time we may not be able to resuscitate the cycle. It was like an alcoholic who decided to go on one more drinking binge before tomorrow, when he will then decide to quit drinking.
Dave Ramsey is a popular financial advisor, but he had a predecessor by the name of Larry Burkett, now deceased. Burkett was the founder of Christian Financial Concepts, a ministry dedicated to teaching God’s principles for financial management.
In 1991 he wrote the book, THE COMING ECONOMIC EARTHQUAKE. Based on his study of history, he predicted our government would some day get to a place where it could not tax enough or borrow enough to meet its daily spending outlay. Once we got to that point, our government would be faced with one of two options. It could either default on its debt obligations or try to inflate its way out of the problem by printing vast sums of fiat (worthless paper) money. I believe we are very close to that point today. If taxes are raised, it could depress the economy. If we continue with the reckless deficit spending, we run the risk of hyper inflation. If our government were to declare a default on all debt. Not only would NO ONE loan us another penny, everyone holding debt at that time would suffer a partial or total loss of their government backed securities. Included in that would be everyone holding government bonds and T Bills. Also, debts owed to the Social Security system would be voided or reduced.
Speaking of Social Security, did you notice the news item a week ago that, due to the recession which has caused a dip in revenues flowing into the social security system, along with a much larger than expected number of people enrolling sooner than expected, the social security system will begin to operate in the RED next year rather than the projected 2016? That means no more excess SS funds to borrow and no tax dollars to start paying back all the money borrowed from SS over the years.
What is the government to do? They will have to either print money to pay back SS loans, reduce benefits or increase the age of retirement, increase the amount paid in by a SS tax increase or some combination of all of the above. In any case, our government has its back up against the wall and most Americans are oblivious as to the serious risk that is upon us. Social Security has also announced there will be no more cost of living measures for the next 2 years.
One final thought, though the author is disputed, most attribute the following to Alexander Frasier Titler, also known as Lord Woodhousley.
In his book written in the 1700s he said the following: A democracy can not exist as a permanent form of government. It will only exist until the people realize they can vote themselves a largesse (social
benefits) from the public treasury. From that time on they will always vote for the politician who promises them the greatest amount of benefits and that society will always collapse due to fiscal irresponsibility.
I would suggest we are somewhere between the warning of Titler and Larry Burkett. What is the solution? We as a people MUST stop demanding money and benefits from government. We must condemn those who do so as thieves, though they are doing their stealing through a 3rd party known as government. We must demand sound money and a return to limited government free enterprise capitalism. If not, we will see this economy come crashing down some day and it will result in tremendous upheaval in society. If that happens, we will see that our current civility is really nothing more than a thin veneer.
I look forward to seeing everyone this Wednesday.
Charlie Meadows
Charliemeadows7@gmail.com
